USA

ByCompiled from wire service reports by Robert Kilborn and Kristen Broman-WorthingtonOctober 10, 2002

More than 10,000 dock workers were due back at 29 West Coast ports after a federal court in San Francisco, at President Bush's request, issued a temporary restraining order in the 10-day lockout by shipping owners. The labor dispute is estimated to have cost the economy as much as $2 billion a day. Bush intervened under emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, last used in 1971.

A resolution authorizing Bush to use military force to disarm Iraq is expected to win easy approval in the House Thursday, while the timing of a Senate vote is in doubt. Calling the resolution a "blank check," fierce opponent Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia signaled plans to use procedural delays to continue Senate debate into next week.

Five Yemeni-Americans charged with supporting a terrorist group were denied bail at a court hearing in Buffalo, N.Y., Tuesday. The judge in the case approved the release of a sixth defendant, Sahim Alwan, on $600,000 bond, noting that Alwan had feigned injury to leave an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, where the group allegedly received training last year, and had cooperated with federal investigators.

Secret chemical and biological weapons tests by the US military in the 1960s were more widespread than previously acknowledged, the Pentagon conceded. In report on 28 tests released at a House Veterans Affairs panel hearing, the Pentagon said the tests involved use of sarin nerve gas and bacteria related to anthrax at sites in Alaska and Hawaii as well as in Britain and Canada. Some veterans are seeking compensation for health problems that they blame on the tests.

Three Americans are among this year's winners of Nobel Prizes in economics and chemistry. Vernon Smith and Daniel Kahneman were awarded the prize for work in experimental economics and the role of psychology in decisionmaking, respectively. The chemistry award went to John Fenn of the US, Koichi Tanaka of Japan, and Kurt Wuethrich of Switzerland.

Convicted serial killer Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida. Wuornos, a former prostitute, was found guilty in 1992 of killing six men. She is only the second woman executed by the state since capital punishment resumed in 1976.